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These poems now seem didactic and presumptuous to me.
1may 198?
Short though time be,
There is plenty of it
If we know and name
Precisely what it is we seek.
Long though distance be,
We can easily cross it
If we find the straight path
And bravely take the steps.
Solid and impenetrable though barriers seem,
We can see and be through them
If we learn to be so carefree and light
That we slip past their complex patterns.
27 April, 198?
Speak from yourself.
At sea? Find out.
Look. Ask. Discover. Uncover.
The only cover is not looking.
The sole thing hidden, the unseen,
The only mystery, an unperceived nothing.
What you see is what you see,
But don't cease looking.
Don't look less,
Having "seen" all.
That slams the door on possibility;
That describes the grim history of fossils.
"Look at yourself", your enemy says,
So you will not see to operate
Or see good or evil happening on the field of play
Or see to join your friends in the game
Or see to make nice life decisions
Or see him making off with your watch,
Your bed, your sandwich, your wife, your purse,
Your future, your repute, your goals,
Your freedom, your ability, yes, your vision.
One who has much to hide fears knowledge and ability
And seeks to kill it wherever he sees it,
And he sees it everywhere because it is everywhere
So he is stopping, stopping all around;
Stopping life and reach.
Therefore the only defense is to live and reach.
26 April, 198?
Like a monstrous gregorian chant
On the navel of a Kodiak bear,
The brackish waters heavenly tided
Rose and arose is a rose,
To engulf archangels splendor;
Something unpreviously known
As part of an inspirational
Ecclesiastical spiral.
Felix the helix, he licks the salt-lick of contentment,
Enjoying another privilege,
When internal lassitude wanders tense into forbidden fields,
Harvesting dust motes for builder's stones.
If this seems confusing, it is.
Here, step behind and see the backing of the silvered mirror.
Where is the fascinating image now?
Does it mind now?
Do you mind?
You do mind your own business.
A mind is a mine or a trap
As you turn inside, outside, inside, outside, etc.
April, 198?
I have tried to fashion a portion of pure beauty,
But have I succeeded in any sense?
There are those who would eagerly say, "Yes, beauty!".
Would any say, "Pure"?
Would any heart stand the pure if it existed?
Still, that is what I would,
Or
waste the rest of this wasted life in such frivolous intent.
Has it been worth it,
This half-blind groping for the unattainable dream splendor?
The subtle half-hope, the once-and-again pure scent of
Pure embraced beauty
Not to sell soap or gods
Not to vend spent rules and rulers
But to stir life and beings
Worthy of their best goings.
A door in the mirror, not dormir*.
*(dormir - french and spanish: to sleep)
April, 198?
So far, yet so far,
This recessional project.
So near,yet so near.
Still, on, to waste more future
In archaic quest of bubbling evanescence.
What else is worth doing
Than revealing beauty to beauty
18 April, 198?
The
The rain comes down,
The rain goes up,
The rain goes around,
The rain soaks a pup.
The sun beats hard,
The sun beats soft,
The sun stands guard,
Once it even coughed.
The moon glows blue,
The moon eyes the night,
The moon shelters few,
Hiding all its might
The wind sucks strong and long,
The wind will always obey the wind laws
Which to it belong.
In rain, moon, sun, or grey
The light refines, the dark defines,
The thought confines, the decision designs
April(?) 198?
An alien in this world, outcast, outsider;
Lying with both legs in this bear-trap of a world,
this dungeon of madness.
Here strapped to that body, receptacle of pain, haven of death.
Oh, to kick free and tilt again with the stars.
I invent the sentry mouse armed to the teeth
And only fearing felines consider me insane.
I invent the production dollar
And only freeloaders and dollar-gamblers draw their guns.
I invent a game called being alone
And only those who are others scream for blood.
I invent laughter and play
And the solemn keepers bark and pray for stillness
And convulse into gnawing the rugs
And chatter on the unaccustomed wavelengths.
This world, alien of universes,
Grasping, persisting, crushing (it hopes)
All life by its illusions of power and death
We can never leave but by coming to life;
Never can leave but fully awakened.
It has no hold on us but our compulsive grip
On its glittering promises never delivered.
Jan/Feb 198?
My green racing tide you felt urging
Was to your own intensity applied
To separating you from the urgency of need
Over to the joy of playful give and take.
Your rushing sands of time I saw purging
Were to my own sense of immensity supplied
With examples in the form of seed
Filled with cautious promise in sinking winter's wake.
My vast embrace which you are not forced to take
Requires attentive flapping ears to heed.
Its only menace is past and future untied.
Reason enough for ghostly incessant urging.
Your homing in on the nest sees bodies quake
As it triggers chains and chains of perpetually beings freed
After ages-old wounds festered and magnified
Until today's restorative balm of pure life resurging.
1983
If anyone thinks he or she has harmed me,
Let that one be at peace;
For I bear no scars from any adventure and encounter
With
any one in that flurry of games forty-six years a-playing.
Only the thrall of thinking in the nightmare cloud
of mystery and anxiety fooled me.
That damned cloud is vanished into its new life,
recycled as blessing,
No longer blastingly condemned to whirl and confuse
and mask the delicate howl of tender battles
where the lily absorbs the empire's death-star,
where fanged and bloody bodies hacked into
a feast for maggots are transfigured
by absorbed attention into amazedly joyous
patterns of come and go.
Vanished it is in its continuous beginning.
And if any there be whom I have slain:
Here, feel again, as I reach out,
The fatal stroke fall as often as you wish.
Sept/Oct, 1978
You create racial downfalls;
Builded immensities spacial,
Turn upon yourself, claw and caress,
Time stretch upon racks and wrack.
I make my own music in and around ignored brittle forms.
A dweller is not his house, nor seems so.
You live as a growth, die as decay, die as fade, live as grandeur.
Strong and pale, bright and dim,
Wrestle you your arms and legs of ideas,
Trip your own advance,
Attack your flank attack,
To attach the strife to life,
Or create your still, serene flight
Omniverse to omniverse,
No clashing , no crashing,
In infinite dance with us,
The masters of generation.
date unknown (apparently for Brian)
May all your future ways be light,
After the tarry black past passes;
Indeed, passes transfigured by present joys
To become a vast starry night
Filled with points of realization
Now unclouded by a lost tomorrow,
Until was, is, and will be
Manifest themselves as the myriads of your own life gestures
In perfect and wondrous orchestration ever fresh,
Dwindling and building as a rain storm
Trickling down the siding and windows of the heart,
Pattering its voice in pools and on petals.
A simple elegance of planetary reflections.
Clinging, sagging, tenuous drop,
Visiting a dandelion leaf in crystal form.
This will be as surely as you grow to it
In vision, courage, imagination, and interest;
As surely as you are, as you know, as you create.
date unknown
And perhaps every poem should begin with "and"
To the degree that they comprise a concatenation of sayings.
And perhaps the way something is said results in
more meaning than the statements it makes.
And perhaps what is sincerely said forms the shape of a thought
that dictates the structure and form.
And perhaps the formalist is an architect
and musician at heart as he conducts
and builds a page.
And perhaps joy has no face,
and blinds the form
and meaning
And sears with light
and...
date unknown
There is so much to be and do
As to take at least living forever.
So much to learn and understand that
Ages filled with living would be swollen
To contain all the desired experience,
The joys and griefs, wins and losses,
That beginning now, living forever is the only solution.
Barging forever at full tilt
Might bring one close to a glance
At getting some part of it done.
date unknown
We live in a blind world that thinks it sees.
The man in the street, the man in the castle,
Both view truth whole, they tell themselves;
Though always through the eyes of others
By remote hookup via satellite electronics.
Their thoughts grow from words and symbols
Never fathomed but felt in high pretense
From suggestion, inference, implication.
Their opinions are true to the puppets
While the puppet-master lies in drunken stupor,
Back to the wall, impotent, confused.
Circling the volcano rim, choking on smoke and ash,
The pretending seers lead the see pretenders,
All at sea, facing facts with their backs;
Never tempted into observation of life for answers,
They trust their betters, the critics and interpreters,
The leaders and agents of the past and future imperatives.
Onward they, into the pit of truth.
Feel its warmth, hard to breathe?
Who said the road to truth was easy?
And the toxified, self-appointed god stirs the fires
Near to pull his puppets and puppet-clingers with him.
This is the fate of man and his planet
Until he casts off his fossil eyes
And sees direct with the flame of being.
date unknown (circa 1980's)
Improvisation
Let no one send me
from this tired old planet
into an unknown star
let no one send me who knows
how far and how straight he had gone
so that I am not surprised to find tea at three
so that from there I can see far and see near
or not need to see or see all that there is to be.
The star's light reaches this place sometimes.
I do not wish to follow the kangaroos
in their desert, in their search,
in their desperate search for imagination.
And the passing of friends into other forms
should not disturb me at this late date.
And time does not lead me, and space, perhaps, will heed me.
And if I write to the right, to the left,
if I write down the middle, if I write down all my thoughts,
what will become of the world with such an attack of ideas?
Can it defend itself?
Does it need to defend itself?
Do I question the wrong answers?
And the beach is for walking on
for people, for lemmings, the combers of beaches
for thinkers, swimmers, even old fishermen
who have no more to do than to string a line into mystery.